In Pieces(24)

As if I were imitating the gobbledygook going on in my head, I put together a slapstick performance of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass for the senior assembly. My best friend, Lynn, whom I’d convinced to join the drama department, played Alice, while another theater student and I waddled around the stage, falling and smacking into each other playing Tweedledee and Tweedledum. As a result, I was named “Funniest in the Class” in the 1964 Tomahawk, the school yearbook.

But when the curtain came down and the pom-poms were dumped in the trash, when the last notes of “Pomp and Circumstance” faded away into that June day, the reality of what lay ahead of me began to penetrate the fog. I had no stage. Without that I didn’t exist. I had to find a place where I could act.


The Film Industry Workshop was a small organization located on the lot of what was then Columbia Pictures, in the heart of Hollywood, and one night a week the group was allowed to hold classes on a soundstage. FIW was not well known in the acting community and I can’t imagine it was well regarded. Its classes primarily focused on teaching students how to hit their mark, which was a piece of colored tape stuck to the floor. You were expected to find that smidgen of tape without looking down to see where it was located, while at the same time performing in front of a make-believe camera, simulating close-ups and over-shoulder shots. The scenes were handed out at the beginning of each class, material taken from an episode of one of last season’s television shows. Not exactly Ibsen.

I’d never heard of the workshop but then I hadn’t heard of anything. It was Jocko who stepped up, saying that he knew someone who knew someone, which was enough for him to tout the workshop, suggesting I audition to see if they’d accept me. Unfortunately, the workshop charged a twenty-five-dollar fee for the opportunity to perform in front of its panel of experts, and that was twenty-five dollars which Baa didn’t have. This meant that I either had to give up the idea or force myself to call and ask my father—whom I was still visiting, though less frequently. For all of Dick’s shortcomings, he had always found a way to show up for an evening performance of my term plays, sometimes driving an hour to get there. And when I surprised him with my request, he surprised me by immediately sending a check.

A week later, in front of a half dozen people sitting at a long table, I performed a two-character scene from Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic, with my mother playing opposite me. I hadn’t bothered to read the play, stopped after finding the one scene, so I don’t know what the hell I thought I was portraying. But whatever it was, I was admitted to the workshop. And on the following Thursday evening, after my first—oddly unchallenging—class, I stood on the corner just outside the gates of Columbia waiting for Ricky to pick me up, since I wasn’t allowed to drive at night.

Just as my brother had promised two years earlier, every June he came home from Berkeley for a few weeks, though that summer I’d hardly seen him. Most of the time he was with a girl whom he had met years before while competing in a gymnastics match against Garfield High. Beautiful, slightly shy Jimmie was the student who held the scorecards in the air after every event, cards that always had my brother on top. After graduating, he reconnected with her and that fall, Ricky would take Jimmie back to the Bay Area with him, where she was to be a freshman at the University of San Francisco. Eventually Jimmie would become his wife, which she is to this day, devotedly.

As I waited on the corner, watching all the cars whiz by on busy Sunset Boulevard, I noticed a man heading toward me with such purpose he made me wonder if I’d left something behind.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Are you Jock Mahoney’s daughter?”

“Yes,” I said meekly, then reconsidered. “Well, no. Actually, I’m his stepdaughter.”

The man smiled, then continued quickly, as if trying to keep me from running off like a scared rabbit. “I know your stepdad. I know Jock. I’m Eddie Foy the Third. I saw your audition last week. Tried to catch you in class tonight but just missed you.”

“Hi,” I said with as much ease as I could muster.

“I work here,” he continued. “I’m head of casting for Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia, and I’d like you to come on an interview tomorrow.”

I just stood there with my teeth hanging out, saying nothing. I couldn’t believe this was real. Mr. Foy watched me searching for something to say, then handed me a little card with his name and the Screen Gems logo on it, asking if I had an agent he could contact. When I shook my head with an incredulous no, he told me to show the card to Jock and to come to his office tomorrow at eleven.

“Can you do that?” he asked, as if I were a five-year-old.

I reached for the card like I was afraid it might bite me and said in a voice so high only dogs could hear it, “Okay…”

“Great.” And as he began to walk away, he stopped, then turned back. “Tell me your name again.”

With eyes as big as pie pans, I answered, “Sally. Sally Field.”

“Okay, Sally. See you tomorrow,” and he walked away.

Something had reached out of nowhere to change my life, just as it had for my mother and even my grandmother before her. For one moment, I could see out of the fog and into my future, then it was gone again, and the only thing I knew for sure was that Ricky was very late.